Shadows
by Krizrin
Summary: Jaina says her last goodbye, and takes a moment to remember. AU.


**Warcraft belongs to Blizzard.**

Shadows

There were certain shadows, Jaina knew, those of a bitter, colder slant. Hungrier, for their perilous source, they were by their very nature, inexplicable – too mystifying to dismiss, yet forever eluding revelation. They robed this shattered pinnacle, these shadows, speaking to her in whispered voices of the one she could not set aside, the one in whose name she could never forgive herself.

_Arthas_. The shadow on her soul. Her aching eyes moved unwillingly to where he lay.

So still now, he was – life gone, his strong body broken – serene, at last, in the Light, yet forever claimed by the ice. The proud head was tilted back, dead gaze averted. Long tendrils of his white hair stirred, tangling in the wind off the ice that whistled across this high place. It keened softly, a spectral sound; and she wondered if it mourned him.

Kneeling beside him, Jaina looked upon his face; and it seemed a stranger's visage – aloof, untroubled by all he had wrought, unyielding, even in death. His eyes, now glazed with ice, gazed past her, unseeing, silvery lashes etched with frost. Tentative, she reached to touch him, her heart twisting in anguish, as she rested her palm upon his icy brow.

Jaina shivered; the cold in this place was unbearable. She never wanted to be cold again. She never again wished to feel even a cooling breeze upon her cheek. No more ice, no more sleeted world of endless white.

Disbelieving that it had come to this, she pondered his wounds, the frozen expanse of his spilt blood. He had been the deadliest kind of ice… in the end. A pitiless inflexibility, neither giving quarter, nor – to her despair – receiving it.

There was no resolution in seeing him as he was now, as what he had become; she was desolated, tormented by images of all she had lost, of all that had been stolen away.

Jaina could only pray the Light was not as vengeful as those who had attended to his fall. It was the mage's desperate hope that _somewhere_ his captured, tortured soul had found some measure of peace from the hungry darkness that had taken him far beyond redemption.

She looked at him again, recalling his waking restlessness, his sweet composure in sleep, and how she would lie awake, content to just watch him dream – his fleeting smiles, the dawn light flutter of golden lashes, soft sighs. Sleepy lips to kiss, not to rouse him, but only to revel in the knowledge that he was hers.

"Do you remember, Arthas?" she whispered, and for one enduring moment, caught fast in memories, even the chill could not intrude. And when she trembled, it was to the phantom warmth of his lost embrace, a ghost's panted breath against her skin, a lingering kiss, and gentle fingertips making her gasp with the slightest caress.

Had it been the intensity of her love for him – so readily returned – that had made him unforgettable? Or had it simply been the blinding passion and abandonment of youth?

Tears filled her eyes, blurring the sharp angles of his features, falling to freeze upon his ashen skin.

And this was what had become of them. The savage death of that sweet, shared tenderness, the most piercing loss, and now, this unendurable end.

_ Was happiness such a sin that only agony could expunge it? _

She groaned, familiar remorse besieging her as she remembered soft, intimate whispers, promises she had made, never guessing how such innocent urgency would – too soon – twist to destroy her.

All she had of him now was sorrow and regret; and yet she clung to the pain, to the helpless, aching need for him, allowing it to feed, too terrified of losing even more to ever be free of its burden.

It had grown, over time, to eclipse all else.

Even the Light, once the source of his strength, had rejected him; all had turned to curse and condemned him. Only she, to the very end, had somehow believed he could be delivered from the darkness and made hers again. Yet now, he was gone forever, all prayers but wasted words, all hope for his reclaim… a _lie_.

_ How could he be dead? _How had she failed to preserve him? And how was it that _she_ still lived? Only to be haunted – not by his lonely shade, but by the hollow echo of his absence.

And so much of her – all youthful promise and desire, the willingness to love without reservation – had passed with him, as lost and as defeated as he.

How had such longing, such perfect love come to _this? _

She peered at him in earnest. Yet, had he not slipped inside her skin, drawn as the moons' tides to the rhythms of her constant heart? Did he not still abide there, in the quiet moments, in the secret spaces within, shaped of memories – for him, alone. She closed her eyes, moving her hand to caress his hair, remembering warmth and gold, far away from this white-ice place.

_"I love you," _Jaina whispered_;_ but death's chill was the bleak, uncaring answer. "Only wait for me, beloved," a soft plea, sighed into the unraveling wind, "I will still be yours," she promised, "when death grants our next embrace…"

Closing her eyes, and holding fast to the one thing left her – the memory of him – she kissed cold lips that had once been so responsive, and nestled her warmth into his ice, as if to break it.


End file.
